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Substance Abuse - the Danger of Superficiality in e-Learning

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E-Learning should be more than casual grazing

In an era of information overload, how much is real? If you Google “Sokal hoax,” you can learn about some of the dangers of an “anything goes” approach to information distribution – a leading journal was duped into publishing an apparently serious scientific article which was actually complete nonsense.

A recent article by Carmen Taran reflects on the concept of superficiality and how it relates to e-Learning. How often do we create courses that look and sound good but which sacrifice depth and rigor for the sake of expediency? If you took down 80% of your e-Learning courses for a day, how many people would complain? Most of this superficiality happens because we are often in a rush to deliver and don’t have the time or the energy to devote to thorough analysis.

Sometimes we oversimplify e-Learning content for the sake of brevity. We are addressing a generation of students with increasingly shorter attention spans; learners who are after instant stimulation, shortcuts, and quick fixes. Why waste time on unnecessary argument? Thorough treatment is for old-fashioned academics.

Media and advertising sound-bites are not helping. Slogans promise a complete meal in three minutes, tax submission in two steps, and better abs in one move or less. If people are convinced they can get results without effort in other areas, why not expect the same from e-Learning? Why waste effort when instant, comfortable chunks are so much easier to handle? Superficiality has become especially attractive to corporate students seeking instant gratification.

We’ve become too gentle with our students. We encourage learning by casual grazing. If we keep going at this pace, trapped in 140 character culture, the future of e-Learning and m-learning is bleak.

Select any of your e-Learning courses and count the number of screens where detail is sacrificed for the easily digestible. There are probably quite a few. Forced brevity breeds superficiality. In many fields, you have to admit the frustrating complexity. Students might tell you that they are looking for are a “few simple rules” but in many areas, there are no simple rules. Many topics are complicated and situational. Don’t oversimplify them.

Think of it this way: if everything in a training program was simple, users would not need training. If everything was complex, they wouldn’t understand it.  Simplicity and complexity need each other. It’s the contrast between them that shows your skills and provides students with substance and ease of learning. Just as we need the dark sky to appreciate the moon, we need complexity to appreciate simplicity.

If you tend to oversimplify because you’re worried about the length of your course, remember research shows that adult learners’ attention span starts fading after 30 minutes. The key word is “learner” – the entertainment industry can keep our attention for more than two hours, but learning situations are more taxing, especially if you’re asking students to retain and apply information rather than simply browse.

Learning objects may be the basis of modern instructional design, but they ignore relationships and holism. There’s an old Sufi teaching that says,  "You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must also understand and.” Being able to see connections between what is typically thought of as separate parts is the sign of the designer who thinks critically, not superficially.

To avoid the traps of cursory e-Learning, start with small steps. Find three to five areas where it is vital that your students have in-depth knowledge. Include enough substance to keep them engaged for 30 minutes at a time, and show them how those different areas are interconnected. Don’t spoil the idea of depth with phrases such as “everything you need to know.” Substance does not necessarily mean exhaustive information. It just means having enough to feel intellectually satiated. If you want students to return, leave them on high notes, with the promise of more substance during their next trip.

In the areas where knowledge is meant to be brief, use words such as “overview” or “getting started”  - let users know what to expect and where to go for more. Don’t compensate for lack of content by providing a surfeit of links. A screen with dozens of links can be disheartening. A few discrete, well chosen references work much beter.

And avoid going to the other extreme. Don't offer overdoses where the content is not that critical. Inserting pictures into a Microsoft Word document is better explained by a one page pdf document than an e-Learning course with objectives, interactions, and summary.

Designers will often respond that “the client wanted it that way.” Someone else is always to blame - we are absolved of any personal responsibility. We speak about e-Learning programs failing, but how often do we speak of designers failing?  The more we believe we have no control over the substance of our e-Learning, the more undisciplined we become.

Take responsibility for information overload and educate clients on what constitutes manageable training. You probably have rules for other areas in your life  (no more than two glasses of wine at dinner, no more than three pieces of chocolate), so create similar rules for your training design habits – no more than five objectives for a course, or no more than 25 screens per lesson. When you start having such rules, you can devote time saved to other more important areas where there are substance opportunities. Restricting your options, even though it implies fewer choices, benefits everyone.

Look at constraints not as restrictive but as liberating – a way to take the time reserved for volume and transfer it to building real substance.